Google and salesforce.com unveil joint development

Search giant Google and salesforce.com have announced that they have jointly developed a new product that lets Google advertising be resold using Salesforce software, as part of a wide-ranging alliance.

Executives of Google and salesforce, a pioneer in selling software as a web service to business customers, says that customers using salesforce software would be able to resell Google web advertising in 43 nations.

Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

Under the pact, salesforce will resell the Google AdWords platform, acting as an official distribution channel, aiming at small and medium-sized business customers.

As an example of how the deal will work, a user visiting a business's site using salesforce and Google software could click on a Google-delivered advertisement and fill out a form asking for more information on the business's products. This customer data would automatically be piped into the company's salesforce customer database for further action and follow-up.

"We think... this is a natural partnership," Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vice president of global online sales and operations, said at a news conference this week.

"Both companies are in the business of helping small businesses succeed."

Beyond the reseller relationship, the two companies are also working together to give independent software developers a way to create hybrid applications that combine salesforce's sales and marketing software with Google AdWords ad services.

Programmers can create new applications for AdWords, using salesforce's application development platform, known as Apex.

New web-based software, which can be run as mini-applications known variously as "gadgets" or "widgets" inside Google or salesforce software, will be certified under a programme jointly run by the two companies.

The new product, called salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords, links salesforce's Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software to Google's AdWords system for selling advertising to customers as they search the web.

The new product, which costs costs $600 per five users a year, replaces one of salesforce's best-selling products, known as salesforce Team Edition, which was introduced two years ago and which has thousands of existing customers, according to salesforce.com's chief executive Marc Benioff.

The product will be free to nonprofit organisations, reflecting the two companies' common philanthropic interests, added Benioff.

Under an existing programme, Google already offers free advertising services to 2,500 nonprofit organisations around the world, Sandberg said.

Executives of the two companies said salesforce Group Edition featuring Google AdWords is the first of several products that will result from the alliance.

A reporter asked whether salesforce would consider offering a free, entirely advertising-supported version of its sales and marketing software, perhaps aimed at emerging markets, instead of relying on software licensing fees as it now does.

"We don't have an advertising supported offering," Benioff replied. "If there is a time when it is the right thing for our customers, we will do it, but we have nothing to announce at this stage."

Analysts have welcomed the first fruits of the alliance between the two industry giants.

"Some may see this as an anti-climax, but clearly this is just a first step and there will be further steps," said David Bradshaw, principal analyst at Ovum.

"Google and salesforce aren't saying what's next on their roadmap, though with a six-month development cycle, there clearly must be more coming. Instead, salesforce is asking its customers to tell it what they would like to see via its Ideas Exchange. Meanwhile, for those who are keen to get on with developing their own stuff, salesforce has given access to the Google Adwords APIs via its Apex programming environment."

Bradshaw added: "But as a first step in a long programme, the SKEFGA makes perfect sense. In an age when the web is becoming key to success in almost any market, making it easier for smaller companies to buy, use and monitor returns from Google Adwords is a very positive development.

These types of companies will generally not have the technical or marketing skills to do it on their own. We therefore welcome this joint product from salesforce and Google and look forward to more of the same."

(Additional reporting by Shailesh Kuber in Bangalore and Maggie Holland, IT PRO)

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